"I want mastery over myself, and the Matrix," you said, slowly and deliberately, choosing your words carefully. "I don't want a computer telling me what is and isn't possible anymore. I've had a lifetime of…" You gestured with your arms, which felt strangely distant to you right now. Like scenery. "This. This lie. Surrounded, fucking
encased in it. I'm done."
I couldn't help but be impressed by that, even as I found it troubling. That lie, for as much as I despised it details, was my world. Was as close to truth as I could ever see.
"Yeah, I know," you replied, to the thoughts you'd felt me think at the edge of your perception. "I don't… I don't know about that. It's all too big. That's why I…"
You trailed off, unsure how to say it and sure you didn't need to. I understood.
The phone on the small bedside table rang. You picked it up.
"We have a problem," Chrysie said seriously.
It was your phone, and the death of the Old Town archivist. The Agents had pieced it together, or more specifically had pieced together than the crew had been there even if they weren't sure who was targeting who. They were now holding the Librarian under their 'protection'. Chrysie assured Lexi that he'd be safe: they needed him too much to do anything, and after a few weeks they'd lose interest or get distracted.
You'd asked if there was anywhere safe she could go, now that you could rebroadcast into the Matrix at any location, and after a short pause for planning she came in.
"Hey, uh, this is going to be weird, but we actually might have a place," she said. "So… the holding company at your old apartment doesn't actually know you're gone. Your name is out of their records, but your rent's paid up, right?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess?" Despite how recent it was, that life seemed so incredibly distant to your now, so fake. "Until May 1st, what date it is on the inside?"
"April 27th, 1999," she explained. How had it only been less than a month? "Now hold on. Cache is going to join you inside. Lexi, dear, if you're there, any must-haves for an apartment?
--
Not long after, you found yourself in the passenger seat of a van, crawling through evening traffic in the city you'd spent the last three years. Cache was behind the wheel, driving with a concerning lack of attentiveness to the road.
"You took
philosophy?"
"I minored in it," you replied,
"You. Eu- Alice Lovelace took
philosophy. I don't fucking believe it," he said. You let the name slip-up pass: Cache had known you for over decade, even if you still didn't even know his old name, and you found it easy to be patient with him, "I thought you were going to make video games, that's all you ever talked about. You never struck me as a philosophy type."
"Well… there was a girl," you explained. He nodded, laughing.
"Of course. Je
sus Christ."
"Yeah, I dunno. I took it so we'd be in the same class, she turned out to be kind of… a mess but it really stuck with me. I dunno, like, critical theory shit was interesting. Ever read
Ways of Seeing?"
"... no, I didn't get to go to college," he said, blindly turning at a red light and weaving effortlessly around the truck that came within an inch of killing all of you.
"Yeah, how did you get recruited anyway? I've been meaning to ask," you said.
"Okay, I'm 18, I'm working, because you were always the smart one and I didn't get a fancy tech scholarship," he explained. "I was working in the Computer City…"
"Oh shit, I used to hang out there! I was friends with the manager, uh, Bill!"
"Yeah,
we were friends with Bill, it's how I got the job. Well, turns out, the staff telephone in the back room was one of the
Ashur's backup exits. Which is a hell of a thing to find out when you're making out with your boyfriend on break."
"... your boyfriend? Who was this?"
"Uh… you didn't know him. I'd actually be dating him in high school, remember when… no, you don't. I told you had a girlfriend in senior year, but that girlfriend was… a boy. I was worried how you would react," he said, shaking his head. "I… I thought you were gay but really,
really repressed, so I was afraid of like, setting you off?"
"You thought I was gay?" you said, glancing back. Lexi was sitting in the seat behind you, next to the vast amount of Stuff that Chrysie had summoned into the back of the van in the construct, and she was clearly doing her best not to laugh.
"Yeah. You sure as fuck didn't come off as a straight guy," Cache said.
"I mean, you were right, I guess," you said. "Uh, I do kinda like guys? And girls. One of those is gay."
"Mhmm," he said, shaking his head sadly. "Christ, this is dumb, but I kind of had a crush on you at times, and now you're into guys, but you're a girl, and that's not really my thing…"
"Two ships, passing in the night," you said, and that's when Lexi actually lost it, breaking down into giggles in the back seat.
"You okay back there?" Cache asked, and she held up a finger as she tried to catch her breath.
"I'm fine! Sorry, it's really strange hearing the two of you talk," she explained.
"Why?" you asked, and she traced a path with her finger between you, clearly thinking hard about how to explain it.
"Uuuuh… it's because there's only sort of a one-way connection in your memories, it really stands out. Though it's really sweet watching the connection build in the other way again," she said. "I'm sorry they cut you out of everyone's head, Cache, that's one of the things my father has to do. He
hates it."
"Yeah, I can imagine," Cache said. "Don't worry about it, this is the only one that bug me." He punched your shoulder affectionately. "My parents, I think they'd probably be better off not knowing me."
"They were like, really religious, weren't they?" you asked. "I remember a bunch of church shit at their house every time I'd go to… hang out with you, I guess. Play Nintendo."
"Yeeeep. Trust me, for them, no son is better than a gay son. Fuck these
streets I hate driving here. How much farther?"
"We're like two blocks," you said. "How'd you end up here, anyway?"
"Uh, trying to find something out," he said, staring into the mirror as you stopped at a red. "One of our informants in Control told us there was a huge spike of bot activity in US_Coast_West_01, and I was poking around. That's how I got shot."
"Oh, that explains it," Lexi said softly.
"Explains what?" Cache asked.
"The bots, everywhere. I saw like two or three in Chicago, maybe, but here it's like every third person. I guess they're getting ready for an update."
Despite the fact you were in the middle of the road, Cache slammed on the brakes and turned around in his seat. Horns blared behind you.
"What?" he said.
"Yeah. I mean, bot memory works kind of like human memory, but its so simple I can just…" She waved her figure vaguely around. "See it, I guess? The bots are all prepping infrastructure for a security code update, routine stuff."
"Routine?!?" Cache responded, laughing to himself, and drawing his phone. "Chrysie, you hear this? Yeah? I know, we've been connected a long time, but… okay." He covered the receiver and glanced back again. "You know when they're going to roll out?"
"Uh…" she followed a businessman with a suitcase walking the sidewalk nearby, staring. "Two, three days?"
"We have to, we're not going to be back up to broadcast depth that soon. Come on, wake up Ram, they'll agree. Yeah. No, we'll move her in first. Okay, no, we'll just take a look, okay? Thanks." He hung up and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. "Coda, we have a mission."
"I am so lost," you admitted.
"They're updating the map's security protocols, which means cutting most of our exits in a few days. That sucks,
but, it also means we have a chance to get our hands on that protocol before that actually do it. Which means we get it
all."
"What does that mean?"
"It means every phone in the city becomes a port, it means we can see into hidden areas… fuck, we could get backdoor access. You game?"
"I-I, yeah, yeah!" you said, pounding the dashboard. "I'm… fucking exhausted but very in."
"I'll get Chrysie to wire up some stimulants into your brain, that'll pick you up. Right, Lexi, we are
here."
---
Moving somebody into your old apartment was surreal, and the mad rush you were in didn't help matters. You dumped the increasingly mouldy contents of the fridge into a bag, shoved the pile of duffle bags in a corner, and wished Lexi luck.
Before going, you paused and gave her your cell phone, so she could call the ship if you were in broadcast range and she needed help or had a tip. You didn't say anything, it was hard to think of how to. Sharing a brain with somebody made talking feel kind of quaint.
At Cache's recommendation, you took your notebooks and every scrap of computer memory you could carry with you to the exit, so it could be saved to the Ashur's computers. It felt good, to get back one of the few parts of your old life you gave a shit about.
Cache knew exactly where to go, and within minutes you were down the street from the bank you used to have an account at, staring down the darkened street and evading the cops swarming over the place. In the twenty minutes you were there, two armoured cars rolled out of the side street and off into the city somewhere: Cache said they were carrying data to the nodes that would distribute them for activation.
Your target confirmed, you were met in the Construct by the crew of the ship, minus Sprite, who'd been hurt badly enough that their brain chemistry still needed some recovery time. The plan was simple: jam a convoy's communications, run one of the armoured cars off the road, open it up, and snatch the encoding. It was too late now to stop the update, which meant you'd have days, weeks, maybe
months of free reign inside the city before they managed to push another update.
There were cars, three of them, waiting: the grey sedan favoured by Enigma, a generic black SUV with Frag at the wheel, and…
"Dude," you said, shaking your head. Cache was leaning against a pearlescent-white 1955 Thunderbird, whitewalled tires and all. He grinned.
"Any car we want, they said. So, you driving or shooting?"
---
[ ] Driving
[ ] Shooting
Gear?
[ ] 1 Gear
[ ] 3 Gear
[ ] 6 Gear
[ ] 10 Gear
